And another thing: alligators and crocodiles. They look the same to me. Mrs. Ditchman claims she can tell the difference right off the bat. "It's in the snout," she says. It may well be. Fine. I pride myself in that I can see the subtle difference between "Sonora Beige" and "Desert Sand" on the aluminum a half hour before sundown. Beat that!

I'm sure the knowledge will save lives one day. So it's Friday, and that means sudden, full dedication to all the things I didn't get finished in the first five days of the week. I would like very much to come to the end of the list of tasks before me, but no. It would be swell to get that back fence finished, but no. It would be nice to sit and read, but no. It would be good to take the boat out for a change, but... no. There seems to be a lot of stuff stacked about the house. Not sure how it came to that.

For your weekend reading pleasure, I offer you the monthly essay from Hillsdale College. If you have even the least bit of interest in the United Nations, I urge you to take a look. I found it fascinating and revealing. It's by John Bolton, who was a Bush appointee, so if you have BDS you might not make it through the first few paragraphs. I suggest you try to give it a shot anyway. I've heard Bolton in a lot of interviews and have always thought him to be a clearheaded, intelligent, straightforward, no BS sort of guy -which is why he never really fit in at the UN. Anyway, he points out how the UN is nicely democratic, except for the fact that the majority of the countries in it are not. Makes for sort of a bum world vote in the end, doesn't it?

The death toll in Myanmar may rise to 100,000 in the next few days. Oh, you haven't heard? Fascinating that this story isn't getting covered. The Myanmar government refused our offer of swift help, and the UN tried to send biscuits, but the junta seized them, so all UN help has been suspended until further notice. There's talk in the Pentagon of violating the country's airspace and dropping food and supplies in anyway, which would amount to an act of war.

So what would you do? It's another one of those sea lion stories, folks, only this is one big sea lion. Seems sometimes you have to break the rules to do the right thing. Oh, we could sit around and debate it -just soundproof the doors because there's people dying outside. I know some people who wouldn't break the speed limit on the way to the hospital if their passengers were bleeding to death. (A side note about the sea lion story: did you see how the rescuer mentioned that "my wife let me go"? I agree. My wife's permission trump's federal authority every day of the week. "Break the law? Sure! Oh wait, let me check with my wife and see if it's okay...")

There's the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. May God grant us the wisdom to negotiate the difference.




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This just in: the sea lions in yesterday's story were not actually shot. I'm not sure why everyone jumped to conclusions there. Anyway, it seems ripe suspicious to me. Poor sea lions.

Also, I seem to confuse seals and sea lions a lot. My utmost apologies. I've done this all my life and still can't get it right with the pinnipeds. Stalactites and stalagmites I know, because the stalactites hold "tight" to the ceiling. Tortoises and turtles I can do, because turtles are water creatures like the "sea turtle" and tortoises are land creatures like the "desert tortoise". But seals and sea lions? I look at the graphic above and I'm still at a loss. They look the same to me.

Anyway, that's life. It should be the least of my worries. Yesterday I went to pick up the parts for a customer's nice new patio cover and guess what? Wrong color. Guess whose fault? Mine. This could not have come at a worse time. Someone is going to have to pay. That'd be me.

So I'm at home again on this gray day, and the sitter gets it off. A few weeks ago I had commented about how we were having a heat wave in April, and how odd it was because it was really that time of year for the gray to descend. Like I said, June Gloom comes mid-May and lifts around mid-July. Well, it's here. All the color is sapped from a world without sunshine, which makes yesterday's mistake more understandable. One glance at the weather calendar and it's 66 degrees and CLOUD as far as the boxes show. Man, it really depresses the street. I would much prefer incessant rain, but no. You get CLOUD. But hey, that's the way it is in California. Spring takes a vacation. It's a well-deserved one, since it did Fall and Winter's work for months.

Stopped in at an odd, off-the-beaten path Target yesterday just to see if they had something in stock. Leo. Yes, Leo, from the Little Einsteins Leo. You see, there are these cute nine-dollar little dolls, and the Little Ditchman has the other three, but no Leo. Every time we go to Target, all they seem to have is the Quincys, which is interesting because he's the black kid. What can you say about that? I'll leave it alone.

But it's funny how the white boy dolls are always sold out, and yet there's always an overstock on the black boy dolls. There's no black girls in the show, and the Junes and Annies seem to sell next. So at this Target they had a Leo! The last one, flipped upside, way in the back behind the Quincys! Clearly the little Quincys had had it with the know-it-all and his baton-waving, and took him out behind the Doras and roughed him up a bit! (Okay, sorry- really, I couldn't resist!)

I brought him home and there was much rejoicing. The superfecta was complete. The Little Ditchman can barely carry them all down the stairs at once. "I NEED HELLLLLLPPPPP!" she cries from the hallway. It's cute as ever. I did something right yesterday. And your seals are safe with me. Sea lions. Whatever.


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Welcome. It's Super-link Wednesday!

A month or so ago I wrote about the Children's Pool in La Jolla and the problem with the cute seals there. Evidently there's a baby seal on the beach now that's wrapped in a fishing net. But it's not the fishing net that's killing the seal, it's the red tape. Environmentalists passed a Federal law stating that you can only go within so many feet of a protected species, so the law has to be broken in order to save the seal's life. Too many laws, people, too many laws. Seriously. Sometimes I think the world and all the creatures in it would be better off if the lawmakers took more vacation time. Anyway, the word is now that someone snuck down there in the middle of the night and got the damn net off the baby seal's neck. Criminal! Prosecute!

In further seal news... here's a good one: "Endangered Seals Eating Endangered Salmon"! Well, the headline says it all. Evidently the seals didn't get the memo from the Pacific Fishery Management Council. Of course, the real problem here is the dam which provides a veritable buffet for the seals as the salmon are funneled into a small area. It's like shooting fish in a barrel for the seals! Or shooting seals, since the story is further complicated by the fact that some idiot went down there and shot a few of the seals dead, presumably to protect the salmon in a preemptive strike. I guess the authorities catch the seals and truck them away, but the dam things keep coming back. Those are smart seals! Clearly the problem is the dam, which should be removed entirely, even though that would drive up local energy prices. And in a flagrant display of bias in the media, note how "dam" is spelled "damn" a few paragraphs into it! I love the last line, Brian Gorman of the National Marine Fisheries Service: "We need to look at all the problems and try to fix all of the problems." Do we have a strategy for that? It's like telling everyone on a soccer team to go kick the ball into the net. One suspects we'll just pass more laws.

I don't know about that "National Marine Fisheries Service". In that first linked article a spokesperson for the NMFS says it doesn't believe the little seal pup is in imminent danger. Look at the photo! Oh yeah, he's fine!

But, oh well. Any simple solution would have been imagined and enacted years ago, so there isn't one, really, and I don't have the answers, but a guy should be able to go down and help a poor little seal stuck in a gill net if he wants to and not be worried about being prosecuted.

In the end, the little harbor seal freed from the net may find a fate such as this. But only Canadian Harp seals see this fate. That's good news for the salmon!


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You know your wife is mad at you when you wake up to her taking a shower and then, as you flop down on the couch to rouse yourself with that first cup of coffee, she kisses the child and heads out the door. Hmmm, you think to yourself, I wonder when she will return? ...then you look over at the little one and she is in her pajamas. "Did you have breakfast, kid?" you ask, curious. "No."

It might have something to do with this:


It's the ceiling to the guest bedroom. Yesterday I was able to remove it and fit it into these two neat boxes, which I find to be a profound brainteaser -one that presses the boundaries of inter-dimensional physics. Anyway, I did it. It took most of the day and the sum of our house is the better for it, though it irritated Mrs. Ditchman. Seems we had a miscommunication. This was nearly resolved at my admittance of having my priorities out of whack. Perhaps I do. But in the end the garbage man will haul off the ceiling in the two boxes and the guest room won't have that vague smell of some now-distant former occupant who was never able to cure his chronic body odor.

My apologies to all my guests in the past few years who thought they noticed a smell, but didn't say anything. Bless you. I believe the smell was hiding in the ceiling, or perhaps the carpet. Anyway, both the floor and the ceiling are gone now and all that remains is the musty aroma of damp joint compound. An improvement, I say, as now it smells more like the vast hidden potential that lies within those walls.

It would be wrong of me to expound on the fine tunings of the Ditchman marriage here on this blog (especially when I have the other blog where I detail our sex life) but I will say how I would be a decrepit wretch without her. I know exactly where I would be, right now, too: I'd be in some coffee shop reading the newspaper stopping only to check out the next girl who walked in. I'd be full of strong opinions about things that really didn't matter, and I'd be writing them in my notebook -honing my verbiage with a vocabulary that cut like... ahh, forget it. Oh yeah?! Well, where would she be without me?

She'd be a successful business woman, no doubt. (I would have waited a few more years to marry her, but I knew she wouldn't have!)

So I scraped the ceiling and am pretty sore as a result. My wife returned an hour or so later and everyone had eaten and gotten dressed for the day, the dishes were done and the trash was out. I'm sure she had told me that she had some early appointment somewhere, but I think I'm still in Daddy mode from last week, and not back in my aluma-mode as usual. I'll bounce back. We have a bunch of heavy-duty jobs in the coming weeks and I am charged with blowing through them at full speed. I can't be stopped! Why, I'm remodeling the guest bedroom on the side!

I love you, honey!

P.S. Shame on all of you for clicking on that link.


~

I know, I know. You detected a slight bitterness in my postings of late. My humblest apologies. We've kinda had our hands full recently and a good deal of it we keep within the family. Oh sure, our secrets are safe on the Internet and all, but I was looking over some recent posts and noticed the stress was seeping through. I assure you the dam shall not burst! Just hold with me, friends, and we'll get through this together! (Meanwhile, inflate those rafts a little faster, son.)

The flowers are nice. I think I'll keep posting notes and pics about the garden. I imagine that will offend far less people. I received a lot of welcome compliments from some friendly folks yesterday who were over at the place. We hosted a meeting of the fine people who plan the annual summer camp out on Catalina, and actually got a few things done, without letting the basic enjoyment of one another altogether get in the way.

The camp is where Mrs. Ditchman and I first met some twenty-odd years or so ago. I was the director out there in the late nineties, took a few years off to get married, settle down, and in the past few have been invited back as the techie video guy -which was my dream position all along! It's all volunteer work, and I only do High School camp nowadays (though in years past I led several camps all over SoCal in one capacity or another with just about every other age group.) Our group of leaders is a pretty laid back one, thoroughly professional *smirk*, and can find a good time in just about any setting. These are really the best people you want to find yourself surrounded by if stuck at an isolated cove on an island in the Pacific with a hundred and fifty teenagers staring you down. Good senses of humor, the lot of them!

It's a hoot. We filmed our director meeting and posted it on YouTube to stoke the honest flames of excitement in the kiddies:



You can just tell it's going to be a life-changing week.

Camp is so much easier today with all this modern technology. Why, back in my day it was all ring binders, clothespins, and laminated pouches! Now it's all on the iPod! It's also easier because I'm an adult, and not one of them, vying for the attentions of this cute counselor or that one. Wise in the ways of the world, I am now, with no agenda but to make it back home alive to the counselor of my dreams.


~

Okay, so I did it, I shaved the cat's butt. You would, too, if you owned an aged Persian and he was bringing poo danglers into your bed every night and spreading used kitty litter around the living room, up and down the stairs, onto the coffee table, on the couch. We've all just about had enough. He didn't much like it, by the way, I got pretty scratched up. Can't say that I blame him.

Actually, he doesn't make it up onto the bed much lately. It might be that he's too old and frail, but it also might be that the fur is so matted between his legs that he can't make the leap without yanking himself. It's all small hops nowadays, and fewer leaps and bounds than the days of his youth. This is why he's up on the coffee table. It's a stepping stone to the couch.

So there's cat litter everywhere and it's awful. And when that stuff gets wet, it gets gooey. And then he steps in it, or near it, with that thick fur. And then he leaves paw prints. Gooey, wet, cat-urine and litter paw prints up and down the stairs, across the hardwood floor. I had to shave between his toes on his paws. And I shaved his butt. You would too.

Woke up this morning at 4 AM. The Little Ditchman was just up. "Hi Daddy. Sit on the floor." No, kid. Is that all? Go back to sleep. And then I woke up a few hours later with the sparrow banging on the window. I kid you not.

I don't know why this little bird does this. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Yesterday he got sick of me in the afternoon and moved to the guest room window. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Today he's back. Oy, these animals. They're all cute and cuddly for a time, until you realize just how wild and unrefined they are -if Rocky licked his butt like a normal cat, I wouldn't have to shave it! And there's bird crap all over my windowsill!

The Little Ditchman is into Curious George. We watch George in the mornings now after that other animal infatuation show, Zoboomafoo. Today on Curious George, George got locked in a zoo. A monkey! Locked in a zoo! He inadvertently let all the animals out. Stupid monkey! I mean, seriously, get that thing back home in the city where he belongs! We have a book, too, Curious George Visits the Zoo. The plot is that a little boy loses his balloon when it is stolen by a bunch of monkeys in the monkey cage. George saves the day by stealing bananas from the zookeeper and distracting the monkeys with them, while he grabs the boy's balloon back. Huh? What are we teaching our kids here? It doesn't make a lot of sense. Curious George and the Rocket I can handle. There's at least a kernel of truth in there. But the truth about monkeys is that at the zoo they often throw their poop at you. I doubt we'll be seeing that on a cartoon anytime soon, but in this day and age you never know. Look for it in Shrek 4.

No, seriously, I love animals. They're cute, funny, wacky little creatures. Some of them are beautiful, some of them can be trained to do entertaining things, and some of them taste good. But are we teaching kids the right stuff, here? I'm just asking. At the end of Zoboomafoo there's a kid that comes on and says something like how you shouldn't go messing with animals unless an adult says it's okay. Thank you. And at the end of Curious George, there's always a message from another kid that says "George is a monkey so he can do things that kids shouldn't do." Disclaimers! On kid's shows! I'm going to try this parenting method. Next time I do something stupid or bad, I'm just going to turn to my kid and say, "Don't do this."

Just look at the smile on that little monkey's face. Ha ha ha, how cute! Silly monkey! Now, stop huffing the ether!





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Good Morning.


Ahhh, springtime... Everything's growing, including the hair in my nose. This is utterly infuriating. You see, the little hairs in my nose they grow so long that they tickle the opposite wall of my nostril every time I breathe. Seriously, I would prefer cockroaches burrowing into my skull to lay their eggs. I am constantly picking my nose, disgusting all around me.

That cute sparrow on my windowsill I am getting ready to mutilate. It turns and taps on the glass every 29 seconds or so, just to remind me that it's spring, and he's there. Evidently, his mate has built a nest just below the window and he is guarding it. He sees me at my desk and goes apesh!t. I've been trying to get video of him, but he jets off every time I pull out the camera. The Little Ditchman seems to like him, though, so I'll have to wait till naptime to ring his little avian neck.


Please send links to reliable nose hair trimmers.

Sorry. I fear it may be one of those days. The highlight of which will be when I shave the cat's butt.

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